An online journal of the nightly (and daily) nonsense endured by a (former) bouncer at two of New York's most popular nightclubs.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Twenty Minutes

Revenge is a bitch to sit and want. I’ve had to learn this the hard way over the past few years. Someone does something to you, you figure out what that something is – and the true extent of it – and then you want a piece of that someone, but you can’t have it because Johnny Law says you can’t. The frustration can rip your guts apart if you let it.

Twice, in recent years, I’ve wanted to get at someone very badly for something they’ve done to me – and twice, my hands have been tied. This is no good. I’ve had to sleep on this shit for many, many nights, but I’ve learned a few things.

When you’re in this position, the rational people around you will counsel restraint. Let it ride, they’ll say, because the guy who fucked you over will “get his in the end” – which sucks, because the denouement you’re looking for takes far too long, and you want to be the one who gives him “his.” You sit there at night and it churns around your fucking head, and all you really want is to be the guy who teaches the lesson, not the guy who has to constantly be learning them.

I’ve got a guy like that in my life right now. Something happened that I didn’t provoke, and I’m frustrated like a motherfucker. If this came to a fistfight, it would last all of about fifteen seconds. I’m trained and he’s not, and he doesn’t have the faintest notion of what that would be like for him – otherwise he likely wouldn’t have done this. It can’t happen that way, however, because it’s not how society solves its problems anywhere but in combat – and in nightclubs (see first five years of this blog for details).

I’m trying to learn how to do this the other way – the one that tells me to set the guy free to hang himself with his own rope. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and it’s been working. I’d hate to wake up and be this guy, that’s for sure. I’d hate to have no appreciable means of making a living. I’d hate to royally suck at doing something I love more than anything else in the world, with a piss-poor work ethic and no hope of ever getting better. I’d especially hate this last part if I happened to be delusional enough to actually believe I was any good at it.

It makes me sad for the guy sometimes, but then I remember why I’m thinking about it, and it makes me happy all over again to know my worst day on this planet is his wildest wet dream fantasy.

Yeah, dude. You suck massive cock at what you do to the point of being an embarrassment. Must be a nightmare to have hit your ceiling so early.